Читать книгу Incontinent on the Continent - Jane Christmas - Страница 11
ОглавлениеHOW ARE you feeling today?” I asked, poking my head into Mom’s bedroom the next morning. Her pine bed “ was festooned with a pretty white lace canopy that suited her often queenly demeanor.
“I feel OK ,” she mewed, pulling the covers closer to her.
“But I just want to sleep.”
In the planning stages of our trip I had fantasized about Mom and me lounging poolside in our swimsuits on the sun-soaked patio of our trullo, sipping wine and amiably chatting about our dysfunctional relationship. We would raise a thorny subject, discuss it with civilized, wasplike, faux nonchalance, and then laugh hysterically at the folly of our past foolishness. With a clink of our wine glasses we would bury the hatchet, take another sip, and stare dreamily into the distance as the toll of a church bell and the light rustle of olive leaves provided a soothing soundtrack. When we weren’t sipping vino by the pool we would be off on day trips exploring towns and cities in the vicinity.
The reality was that we stayed cocooned in our separate rooms, warding off the cold and trying to ignore the rain pounding incessantly on the windows. Mom would sleep or read; I would study a road map of Italy, work my way through a book of Sudoku puzzles, or practice Italian from the little phrase book my daughter had slipped into my stocking the previous Christmas.
The phrase book turned out to be a small delight. It carried the curious warning that travellers to Italy should steer clear of three topics of conversation: the Mafia, Mussolini, and the Vatican. That just made me want to raise those topics with someone immediately. The book also contained a number of rather salacious offerings, which I read and reread with intense interest. What else was there to do?
Curled up in bed, I sounded out such provocative sentences as: Non lo farò senza protezione (I won’t do it without protection); Toccami qui (Touch me here); Andiamo a letto (Let’s go to bed); O dio mio! (Oh my god!); and the ever-handy Calma! (Easy, tiger!)
In the evenings, Mom and I fell into a lazy routine. We made our own dinner—usually pasta and salad followed by yogurt or an orange—then watched the bbc’s World News or a movie from the small video library stacked in a corner niche of the living room.
“Watched” was a bit of a misnomer: My mother didn’t actually listen to the movie; she more or less conducted a running commentary that began before the dvd was loaded into the player.
Here’s an example.
“What shall we watch tonight?” she asked one evening.
“Have you seen Bridget Jones’s Diary? It’s a comedy,” I said.
“No I haven’t,” she replied. “Who’s in it?”
“Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant.”
“Oh, I can’t stand Hugh Grant,” she said. “What an awful, disgusting creature.”
“You don’t have to like him—in fact, he plays a jerk in the movie anyway, so it’ll make it easier for you to watch,” I offered.
The movie began.
“Who’s that nice young man with the dark hair?” Mom asked about five minutes into the action.
“Colin Firth.”
“He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” Mom said admiringly.
“He’d be nice for you, Jane. I do like his hair. Oh, now look at that dreadful Hugh Grant. Ewww! Look at him. I don’t see what anyone sees in him. Don’t you agree?”
I nodded eagerly so as not to prolong the discussion.
When she wasn’t critiquing the actors’ off-screen lifestyles or on-screen hairstyles she insisted I recap the plot for her—every five minutes. A volume setting of one hundred is apparently not loud enough for her to glean comprehension on her own.
“HE’S SLEEPING WITH HER BUT HE’S ACTUALLY ENGAGED to someone else!” I yelled over the tv volume and into her deaf ear.
“I don’t like it when people sleep around like that,” she replied with much tutting and shaking of her head, as if it were my fault that Hugh Grant was bonking Renée Zellweger, or as if I somehow had the moral authority to call a halt to the action and redirect the players to a more appropriate pastime, such as antiquing in the Cotswolds.
The movie ended happily, not because Renée Zellweger wound up with Colin Firth, but because Mom had the pleasure of seeing Hugh Grant get his comeuppance.
As I removed the dvd from the player and returned it to its case, Mom studied her watch.
“Is it really 7:45?” she gasped. “Where does the day go?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘dago’ too quickly in these parts,” I muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Yes, it is 7:45,” I said louder. “The rest of Italy is just getting dressed to go out for dinner.”
“Well, those Italians can do what they want,” said Mom with the vigor of someone rallying the troops before a battle.
“Because we Canadians are going to bed!”
And with that, she hauled herself upright, paused to get her balance, and then inched her way toward her bedroom. The click of her cane on the terra-cotta tiles was the last I heard of her for the night.
After three days of this I had had all I could stand.
“I’m going out,” I announced to Mom between naps one afternoon. “Will you be OK without me?”
“You’re going out in the rain?”
“It’s let up a bit. Do you need me to pick up anything?”
“Where are you going?” she asked. “And why are you going?
The interrogation had begun.
“Just into Alberobello. I’m getting cabin fever. I shouldn’t be long.”
“But we were there the other day. Why are you going?”
“I need a bit of air and a change of scenery,” I said evenly, holding back an urge to explode into a weeping tirade of how utterly bored I had become. Bored, in Italy! I had dreamed of Italy for about forty years, had pined for everything Italian— the music, the language, the architecture, the art of the great masters. During my university days I had taken courses in conversational Italian and in art history in an attempt to forge a deeper connection to the Italy of my dreams. In those days I sought out Italian men in the hopes that I could become their girlfriend and they would whisk me off to their parents’ villa and introduce me to a large and boisterous family of apple-cheeked aunts and swarthy cousins. I never did find an Italian boyfriend, but that didn’t stop me from craving all things Italian. I frequented small Italian grocery stores, pausing to eavesdrop on Italian conversations, and gravitated toward Italian recipes. I gave clothing with a “Made in Italy” label top priority in the dressing room and in purchasing decisions. Without having stepped on Italian soil, I could close my eyes and summon smells and sensations connected to Italy—the thrashing sea against the coast, the aroma of homemade tomato sauce, the notes of an uncorked bottle of wine, a smoky café; or even the haughty indifference of a Milanese store clerk. With such a vast repertoire to explore, how was it possible that I was already bored in Italy? As I saw it, precious time was being wasted holed up in a cute but remote home with Ms. Lazy Bones.
I unlocked and opened up the solid wooden front door of the trullo, struggled to find the right key to unlock the double wrought-iron screen doors beyond it—getting in and out of the place was like coming and going from Fort Knox—and then sprinted to the car, splashing through puddles that had accumulated on the pale stone patio.
Safely in the car, I was about to turn the key in the ignition when I was seized by panic. I was about to go for a drive with only the vaguest idea of my destination. Once there, would I be able to find my way back? What if the car broke down? What if I had an accident? I spoke no Italian. I had no cell phone. No map of the region. If I made a wrong turn it could catapult me to the far reaches of Apulia and beyond, and I might never find my way back. Despite the few forays Mom and I had made in and around Alberobello since our arrival, I did not feel confident venturing out on my own.
When I encounter situations in which it is clear that I have bitten off more than I can chew, my mind defaults to an intense longing for home and familiarity. Six weeks in Italy no longer sounded as idyllic as it had during the six months in which I planned the trip and spoke excitedly of it to friends. Now it sounded daunting and reckless.
I’m the type of person who gives herself over to suggestibility and impulse. When an idea launches in my brain I am off to the races, and there is no stopping me. I am propelled by my own enthusiasm. I become a one-person cheering section while those around me aren’t sure whether to humor me and wish me well or alert the nearest mental institution. It was the sort of reaction that greeted me when I took up rollerblading in my forties and when I decided to sell almost everything I owned and move to small, remote Pelee Island, Ontario, one winter to embrace the simple life.
So it was one day about six months earlier when Frank, the Italian owner of a café I frequent in my hometown, suggested I go to Italy. I don’t know whether it was the way he said it, with tears glistening in his eyes—he had emigrated from Italy to Canada about fifty years before and had never been back—or whether I had worn myself out with unfulfilled promises to visit Italy. Whatever. As soon as I realized that there was no logical reason preventing me from going to Italy I began packing my bags. It seemed like the most sensible course of action.
I have intermittent bouts of confidence. I give the impression of being a blithe and brave spirit when it comes to travelling, but there is a part of me that is a total scaredy-cat. Rationality flies out the window—not in the planning stages, but only when my two feet are firmly planted at my destination. In other words, at the point of no return. There I stand, stock-still and dumbfounded, as the tap of common sense suddenly turns on and begins to course through me. The question that should have been asked much, much earlier sputters to life in my right brain: “What the hell were you thinking when you came up with this bright idea?” Like the time I stood at the base of the Pyrenees and realized I was going to spend the next eight hours of my life climbing them. God, that was hard. Oddly enough, I continue to put myself in the same predicament time and time again.
The thought of returning to Mom’s bedside and telling her I was too frightened to go out on my own was simply out of the question. So I did the only logical thing: I turned the key in the ignition.
I drove tentatively down the long steep driveway and then carefully up the insanely steep road opposite the trullo, stalling the car half a dozen times in the process. I inched my way along a lane that was no more than six inches wider than my car and oppressively bordered by stone fences and trulli whose walls abutted the road. I took a deep breath, foolishly thinking that by inhaling I might somehow shrink the width of the car by an inch or two and make the passage easier.
Upon reaching the main road, with the rolling Apulia countryside stretching out on either side of me, I turned left and steered the car toward Alberobello.
The steady sweep-and-thump of the windshield wipers and the low rumble of distant thunder provided an ominous soundtrack. Fog drifted like wispy ghosts in front of my car and encircled the twisted, gnarled trunks of the olive trees with their weary branches stretched out like Christ on the cross.
“At least there’s no snow,” I murmured to myself, trying to find the bright side in the soggy scene and buoy my resolve.
Distant brush fires burned and smoldered on a couple of farms. A tradition occurs around mid-March in southern Italy when vines, limbs of olive trees, and other bits of vegetation from the previous harvest are collected, piled into huge mounds, and lit as a sign of rebirth and renewal for the coming season.
Yes, rebirth and renewal: Wasn’t that the reason for this trip to Italy? At least I’m in sync with the spirit of the season, I told myself, desperately clutching at any straw that might make sense of my being here.
I pressed the accelerator pedal down a bit more firmly. The forces of coincidence or happenstance are, for me, like stars aligning, and when this occurs a feeling of confidence returns. I began to feel more like an adventurer and less like an impulsive idiot.
Low, ivy-draped drystone walls built from the abundant local tufo stone were everywhere. They were weathered to an ancient patina, but in spots you could tell by the lighter coloring where new sections had been built or recently patched. This stone border lined the narrow roads and formed gray ribbons across trapezoids of farms, olive groves, and vineyards. The landscape looked a lot like rural England, and the resemblance is no coincidence. About fifty years before they launched their famous conquest of England, the Normans were checking out some Italian real estate. A group of them, fed up with being mercenary Crusaders, left the grinding poverty of their French homeland and trundled off to southern Italy. One day, one of them likely said something along the lines of, “Hey, you know that crossroads we reach on our way to Palestine—the one where we always go straight rather than hanging a right? Let’s check out that other route.” And off they went.
Once the Normans had heaved themselves over the Apennines, the formidable range that runs like a spine from the north of Italy to the tip of its boot, they discovered, to their great delight, a largely wild but culturally prosperous and diverse frontier populated by Byzantines, Lombards, and Carolingians.
One of the many gifts the Normans brought to southern Italy was order—a paradoxical commodity given Italy’s sterling reputation as the epicenter of chaos. In addition to their neat and tidy Norman rules, the Normans introduced their neat and tidy stone fences. The Normans were big on boundaries.
I had told Mom that I was going into Alberobello just to get more familiar with the region, but my real purpose was to hunt for an Internet café. It had been several days since I had last logged on. I hated being out of contact with people, especially my children—something my mother could not comprehend. When I was growing up and left my parents for an extended period of time, we never checked in with one another. We operated under the assumption that everything was fine and dandy unless we heard otherwise.
Those days are long gone, and as much as I like being off the grid, an innate sense of wanting to know, just to be sure, seizes me until it can be assuaged.
I was sure my little family was fine, but we have a habit of staying in contact with each other every few days. I was curious to know what was new in their lives. My boys were in their early twenties—Adam in his first year of college, Matt taking a year off college to work, and sixteen-year-old Zoë was on a three-month exchange program in France. Likewise, they would want to know what I was up to. At the very least they would want to know that their Nana and I had arrived safely.
Now, you would think an Internet café would be fairly easy to find in Europe, but finding one in southern Italy became a grail-like quest. I parked the car and set off under gray skies to troll the streets and lanes of Alberobello, which were slick with rain. I did this for a long time, until I got cold and returned to the car.
I drove to Locorotondo, where I also came up empty-handed. I approached a couple of girls—they were probably about fourteen years of age—with long, straight hair and the teenage uniform of hoodies and jeans. They were holding hands, an endearing cultural affectation.
With my trusty phrase book in hand, I asked if they knew of an Internet café. They looked at each other and seemed confused by the question. I tried speaking to them in French, with marginally better success.
The girls took me on a long walk through town, down a steep set of stairs, and along an unpopulated street—a walk of about fifteen minutes—but once we reached our destination it became clear that they had misinterpreted my request and had taken me to a computer store, which was closed anyway.
I thanked them graciously, but as I retraced my steps I muttered unkind things about their intelligence. Really, how many teens these days don’t know about the Internet? Were these girls still playing with dolls?
I wandered into a few hotels and asked about Internet availability, but they either did not have it or did not know what I was talking about.
I headed back to Alberobello. (That I even found my way back to Alberobello says a lot about intuitive driving and the power of prayer.) Motoring slowly through a tangle of narrow roads and lanes, resolutely determined to find an Internet café, I passed the oddly named Twin Pub. In the window sat a computer terminal.
I parked the car and dashed inside. The place was empty save for the old owner/barista. Did he, by chance, have Internet access?
“Sì,” he said, cocking his head toward the computer. He extended his hand for identification; I handed over my passport. He had me sign a form that was written in Italian but that I gathered was a promise I would not launch porn or terrorist activity onto his system.
The formalities concluded, I sat down and logged on. Within seconds I was greeted with fifty-five messages in my inbox. Nothing says you belong to the world more than dozens of messages in your inbox.
After deleting the solicitations to buy Viagra, the heartfelt pleas to help princes spirit money out of Nigeria, and the well-intentioned but thoroughly annoying jokes, cute-animal photos, and homilies forwarded by friends from friends of friends, I was left with five real messages.
Adam announced he had a girlfriend who was so pretty he wasn’t entirely certain he deserved her. Matthew’s message was a simple “’Sup?” I keep telling that boy that I am his mother, not a rap artist, but he clearly sees no distinction between the two. Zoë excitedly reported that she was having a blast on her French exchange. She loved her host family, her new friends, school, and life in France in general. A couple of messages from Colin inquired how Mom and I were faring and how it felt to feel the warm sun on our faces. (I hastily corrected his weather assumptions.) I answered all of them.
Immensely satisfied that all was right with the world and my loved ones, I logged off. Before leaving, I asked the barista for a cappuccino, savored every drop, then drove contentedly back to the trullo.
THE NEXT day, having found my sea legs for travelling in unfamiliar places, I returned to Alberobello and followed the signs to the centro storico. I arrived in front of the imposing neoclassical basilica just as Mass had ended. The grand Piazza Antonio Curri was swarming with people, mostly older men and women strolling leisurely in small groups down Corso Vittorio Emanuele, every one of them dressed in black.
Judging by the alarmed looks on their faces, I had obviously missed a sign informing me that vehicular traffic was prohibited, at least at this time of day. I pulled off into the small Piazza xxvii Maggio and grabbed the last available parking spot.
I got out of the car and took a short stroll. My eyes settled on a small terrace next to a church, and I walked to the edge of it to check out the view. An incredible sight greeted me: a hillside crammed and cascading with hundreds and hundreds of white stucco trulli. This was Rione Monti, a unesco World Heritage site.
Small, conical-shaped stone dwellings are unique to this area of Italy, though not to the world. They can be found in Egypt, Turkey, Malta, Syria, Spain, France, and even Ireland. But the sheer proliferation of these buildings in the southern part of Apulia makes Alberobello the trulli headquarters.
Initially constructed using the drystone method, they served as seasonal or daily shelters for farmers and shepherds, and also housed livestock and farm equipment. When the region came under the feudal system, the ruling counts of Con-versano permitted farmers to build their little stone homes as long as they didn’t use mortar. What the cunning counts were trying to do was evade taxation. A law had been established forbidding the creation of large urban areas without the consent of the emperor’s tribunal. The counts reckoned that if they could keep their little growing fiefdoms under the radar they could pocket the taxes from their tenant farmers and avoid paying taxes to the Crown. Whenever word got out that a royal inspector was in the vicinity, the counts ordered their farmers to dismantle their homes and make themselves scarce. Once the inspector had left—likely curious as to why there were so many little rock piles dotting the fields—the counts called their farmers back to work and let them reconstruct their trulli. You can imagine the scale of such an operation, with three thousand inhabitants in a “non-existent” village. And you can also imagine the farmers’ resentment.
